Coyote Con

Speaker: Scott Nicholson
9PM eastern May 28, 2010

[Deena] 9:01 pm: It’s time to start. We’re talking about Writing to Scare People with Scott Nicholson.

[scottnicholson] 9:01 pm: Wait, I thought this was writing to scare writers…

[Deena] 9:01 pm: heh.

[scottnicholson] 9:01 pm: two words: “PUBLISHING INDUSTRY!”

[scottnicholson] 9:02 pm: talk about yer bone-chillin horror.

[scottnicholson] 9:02 pm: I’ll start by assuming we all love good food and horror fiction

[scottnicholson] 9:03 pm: horror has changed a lot in the last 30 years

[scottnicholson] 9:04 pm: I think the influence of serial killer and torture horror has definitely altered the genre and its perception by audiences and publishers

[scottnicholson] 9:04 pm: the quiet supernatural stuff is rarer

[scottnicholson] 9:04 pm: and obviously vampires and zombies and werewolves take turns being hot

[scottnicholson] 9:05 pm: and a lot of horror is just an excuse for erotica

[scottnicholson] 9:05 pm: how about we open up for questions? So I can tell what you guys are interested in

[Jazzyartwriter2] 9:07 pm: I’m planning a YA steampunk and am wondering just how much horror is appropriate for teens. I recall the movie last year that was so popular and spurred sequels – but didn’t see it. Would, for example, a serial killer be accepted in YA?

[scottnicholson] 9:08 pm: the boundaries are wide open in YA

[scottnicholson] 9:08 pm: there is still a sensibility to be maintained, but it’s not the emotional tone

[scottnicholson] 9:08 pm: it’s how graphic the depiction is

[scottnicholson] 9:09 pm: you can have, for example, teens hooking up, which was unthinkable in the YA books of my youth

[scottnicholson] 9:09 pm: but you can’t have the blow-by-blow if that makes sense

[scottnicholson] 9:09 pm: really, I find the YA is more “mature” in its emotional content than the adult fiction I read, so just sample around.

[widdershins] 9:09 pm: Do you think the connection between horror and erotica has grown out from violence in porn? Or connected to the two?

[scottnicholson] 9:10 pm: no wid I think the use of vampires and werewolves as fantasy objects are just another form of escapism

[scottnicholson] 9:10 pm: it’s almost safer to fantasize about a hot zombie love than your real fantasy about the boss

[scottnicholson] 9:11 pm: I don’t read widely in the paranormal romance but it rarely seems that violent to me

[kris M] 9:11 pm: Mine kinda goes with widder — horror — erotica? I’m confused what you mean

[scottnicholson] 9:11 pm: Twilight

[scottnicholson] 9:12 pm: lighter romance but still, the idea of interspecial love

[scottnicholson] 9:12 pm: getting it on with critters of the night

[kris M] 9:12 pm: oh I was thinking chainsaw massacre….hehe

[zan] 9:12 pm: I want a more subtle scare something to make them wake up later thinking about it and getting scared How would you handle something like that

[scottnicholson] 9:12 pm: well to me ghosts are scarier than just about anything

[scottnicholson] 9:13 pm: maybe it’s because they can go so many ways

[scottnicholson] 9:13 pm: I mean, you can argue vampires, zombies, wwolves etc are scary

[scottnicholson] 9:13 pm: but to me, they aren’t likely to show up at my bedroom window

[scottnicholson] 9:13 pm: a ghost, who can say?

[scottnicholson] 9:14 pm: so zan, just look for atmosphere and effect and the psychology of the character

[scottnicholson] 9:14 pm: trouble is, a lot of readers equate that with “slow” fiction

[Jazzyartwriter2] 9:14 pm: Are you saying you can have sex in YA, just not described in detail? I’ve started reading YA steampunk but so far haven’t come across any relationships. However, back to the scary, I like things like foreshadowing, the kind that makes you turn on all the lights. It’s scarier than a movie with loud music signaling the scary part.

[scottnicholson] 9:15 pm: Jazzy, yes, just read around–they are pretty explicit in subject matter–again, it’s being honest about what real teens are doing

[scottnicholson] 9:15 pm: the old days of teen books having to pass the “smell test” of adults is over

[scottnicholson] 9:15 pm: of course, you may have to adjust considering the needs of your publisher

[scottnicholson] 9:16 pm: my acid test is “Would I feel comfortable letting my daughter read this?”

[spot_writes] 9:16 pm: I really like it when a writer comes up with a new idea, yet I know how rare that is. So if a writer is going to write something that’s been done before (ie: haunted house) I feel like they should raise the bar and really try to do it better than anyone else has. I’m dissapointed a lot in some of the fiction I read. How do you (personally) go about setting yourself apart from what’s been done? I want to be scared so badly that I turn the light on in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

[spot_writes] 9:16 pm: And that’s the kind of horror I want to write.

[scottnicholson] 9:17 pm: Hmm spot to me I just go into the psychology of the characters, which is why I almost always use shifting third-person POV

[scottnicholson] 9:17 pm: to see how different people experience the same effects or events

[scottnicholson] 9:17 pm: that’s a good bar to set, to do the best book that’s been done in the area

[scottnicholson] 9:18 pm: but if you write true to the things that scare you, you’ll probably succeed

[FrancesP] 9:18 pm: With the new “paranormal” genre books, I wonder sometimes why no one classifies them as just a resurgence of Gothic… is Gothic just an out of date term, or is there a significant difference, ie: perhaps the scare element that Gothic always had. And if we’ve taken the scare out and the result is that kind of popularity, how is the horror genre doing right now?

[scottnicholson] 9:19 pm: “Gothic” as a term got co-opted as an underground culture

[scottnicholson] 9:19 pm: at least in people’s minds, it means eyeliner and black leather and corsets

[FrancesP] 9:19 pm: so I’m just old. figures.

[riversway] 9:19 pm: HI Scott, I’m not interested in horror, but I like a story that builds with tension. to me, that is far more adrenaline popping than horror.

[scottnicholson] 9:19 pm: I think horror is kind of broad and rich, but not a huge fiction audience

[scottnicholson] 9:20 pm: I agree–I like the build-up

[scottnicholson] 9:20 pm: I;m a slow zombie guy, I don’t like them running around fast with cars and machine guns

[Jazzyartwriter2] 9:20 pm: Considering the so-called “slow” foreshadowing, just think about Psycho and the slow ascent up the stairs. Is there anything scarier than that? I have a cozy humorous mystery I’m working on but I want at least one scene that would scare the living daylights out of the reader.

[Deena] 9:20 pm: I find the idea of fast zombies so much scarier.

[scottnicholson] 9:21 pm: Jazzy people aren’t as patient as they used to be!

[widdershins] 9:21 pm: I think I’m mired in the need for a definition here…. what defines horror in SF and Fantasy? Texas Chainsaw Massacre style or Twilight paranormal, or 2001 space opera? … ties in with Frances’ question I think.

[scottnicholson] 9:21 pm: this is the Twitter horror age–scare them in 140 words

[scottnicholson] 9:21 pm: definitions have killed the genre in a way

[scottnicholson] 9:22 pm: all that is rubbish spawned by a publishing industry

[scottnicholson] 9:22 pm: looking for easy slots to dump a book in

[scottnicholson] 9:22 pm: because they are all lazy

[scottnicholson] 9:22 pm: I understand it from a business perspective, because books are unique products but have a short shelf life

[scottnicholson] 9:23 pm: it’s not like building a brand of Luck’s Beans over 40 years or something

[scottnicholson] 9:23 pm: Look at Aliens

[scottnicholson] 9:23 pm: they call it sci-fi but it’s scarier than almost every horror movie out there

[scottnicholson] 9:23 pm: genuinely frightening and tense

[scottnicholson] 9:23 pm: lots of shocks but also a build-up of suspense

[scottnicholson] 9:24 pm: the labels are arbitrary and getting less significant as the markets fracture

[Jazzyartwriter2] 9:24 pm: They don’t know what they’re missing. I like a book that has me on the edge of my seat all the way to the end. It’s sort of on a par with nickel and diming you to death – little bits by little bits, each one building the suspense.

[widdershins] 9:25 pm: Thats what the industry has created but what do YOU think it is?

[scottnicholson] 9:26 pm: horror may be different from fear

[scottnicholson] 9:26 pm: horror also includes shock

[scottnicholson] 9:26 pm: terror

[scottnicholson] 9:26 pm: psychological threat

[scottnicholson] 9:26 pm: it is an element and a tone that appears in many genres and brands of fiction

[scottnicholson] 9:27 pm: Scooby Doo, Belle, Harry Potter, and Dracula all at the same party

[scottnicholson] 9:27 pm: horror doesn’t work as a marketing label

[scottnicholson] 9:27 pm: and the torture stuff in movies certainly didn’t help fiction labeled “horror”

[scottnicholson] 9:28 pm: I’ve heard it a thousand times

[scottnicholson] 9:28 pm: “I like Stephen King but I don’t like horror”

[scottnicholson] 9:28 pm: that sort of thing

[scottnicholson] 9:28 pm: people love to be scared

[scottnicholson] 9:28 pm: but only a fraction love to be spewed with blood and gore

[Jazzyartwriter2] 9:29 pm: Is there a difference between thriller and horror, or are they the same?

[scottnicholson] 9:30 pm: thrillers can be horrifying and horror can be thrilling but they are also different

[scottnicholson] 9:30 pm: how’s that for a cop-out?

[scottnicholson] 9:30 pm: again, it’s just labels

[Jazzyartwriter2] 9:30 pm: LOL

[scottnicholson] 9:30 pm: Silence of the Lambs–thriller or horror? Clearly both

[scottnicholson] 9:30 pm: thriller as a label has certain conventions

[scottnicholson] 9:31 pm: ticking clock, big scale, usually science or espionage or politics

[scottnicholson] 9:31 pm: sells tons

[scottnicholson] 9:31 pm: usually pretty shallow in characterization

[scottnicholson] 9:31 pm: my faves, WIlliam Goldman, Ira Levin, Thomas Harris, they can do both

[scottnicholson] 9:32 pm: but all that is industry labels emerging from the last 20 years

[scottnicholson] 9:32 pm: it all used to be just books

[scottnicholson] 9:32 pm: storytelling is the key

[scottnicholson] 9:32 pm: interestingly, a lot of books that fell between the cracks or couldn’t fit a neat publisher slot are doing well as indie books

[spot_writes] 9:34 pm: OMG. I worked in a bookstore for many years and I heard people say that all the time “I like Stephen King, but I don’t like horror”. Of course, these were the same people who read every book Oprah told them too. (sorry, I’m told I’m a bit of a book snob). How can they not think of Stephen King as horror?? He
makes me leave the lights on.

[scottnicholson] 9:34 pm: because “horror” is that stuff with knives

[scottnicholson] 9:34 pm: Freddy and Jason

[scottnicholson] 9:35 pm: that’s what it is in the public’s mind, especially the book-buying public

[scottnicholson] 9:35 pm: that’s why “horror” as a genre doesn’t really exist anymore as a label

[scottnicholson] 9:35 pm: even Leisure quit using it

[Deena] 9:35 pm: What do they call it now?

[spot_writes] 9:35 pm: oh my. So the public really is just as silly as my hubby’s been telling me they are for years? Damn. I hate it when he’s right.

[scottnicholson] 9:35 pm: Fiction

[Deena] 9:35 pm: huh.

[scottnicholson] 9:35 pm: Spot, let’s give them the benfit of a doubt

[scottnicholson] 9:36 pm: publishers certainly haven’t helped educate or build the genre

[scottnicholson] 9:36 pm: and writers are stuck having to say “I don’t write horror”

[Deena] 9:36 pm: Pam, what was your question?

[PTurner] 9:36 pm: What about publishing thrillers in short/novella form, ebooks, digital etc.? Is that possible, or is it traditional print only? I’m thinking since a lot of paranormal is published this way, along w/urban fantasy.

[scottnicholson] 9:37 pm: sure in e-books there is no artifical word count

[scottnicholson] 9:37 pm: publishers set this odd 80-100k word thing based on the number of copies they can fit in a shipping carton

[scottnicholson] 9:38 pm: that’s all about distribution and 48 to a case, not art or craft or storytelling

[scottnicholson] 9:38 pm: look at all the great novels that are 40-50k

[scottnicholson] 9:38 pm: that will definitely change with the ebook era

[scottnicholson] 9:38 pm: along with plenty of other things such as narrow labels

[PTurner] 9:39 pm: Glad to hear it. I write short, 40k on average.

[scottnicholson] 9:39 pm: my short story collections do way better in ebooks than they did in paper

[scottnicholson] 9:39 pm: but a lot of that is price

[alicats] 9:40 pm: Is there any room in the genre for the sympathetic monster anymore? ie: Frankenstein, even Lestat and Lecter? (apart from erotica) It seems even King and Koontz are leaning toward the relentlessly evil bad guy.

[scottnicholson] 9:40 pm: I haven’t read Koontz’s Frankenstein but I understand that monster takes the choice of being good

[scottnicholson] 9:40 pm: rising above his nature

[scottnicholson] 9:41 pm: funny but Koontz always lets ordinary folks “rise up” to overcome but his evil forces are just evil and that’s that–no hope for redemption, only extermination

[scottnicholson] 9:42 pm: seems the werewolves and zombies are already going over to sympathetic characters, too

[scottnicholson] 9:42 pm: becoming almost parodies

[scottnicholson] 9:42 pm: I mean, zombie romance?

[scottnicholson] 9:42 pm: “ooh baby, eat me” takes on a whole new meaning

[alicats] 9:42 pm: my sentiments exactly LOL.. sorry

[spot_writes] 9:42 pm: LMAO.

[ninjabarb] 9:42 pm: LOL

[widdershins] 9:42 pm: ROLF

[ninjabarb] 9:43 pm: Scott’s right. When I teach horror, my students think horror = slasher flick. They don’t even pause to think about things like Silence of the Lambs or Alien or A History of Violence. Maybe because horror really isn’t precisely a genre. It’s a story, any story, that creates and sustains dread. That can be quiet dread like in King’s “The Reach” or loud messy dread like in Barker “Dread.”

[scottnicholson] 9:43 pm: Great insight, Barb

[scottnicholson] 9:43 pm: it’s way to big to fit in one box

[ninjabarb] 9:43 pm: @ alicats Urban fantasy and paranormal romance have definitely romanticized a lot of the classic monsters.

[scottnicholson] 9:43 pm: and some of it is the age of the writers

[scottnicholson] 9:44 pm: I edited Grave Conditions, with some great writers, Keene, Maberry, Konrath

[scottnicholson] 9:44 pm: lots of comics stories

[scottnicholson] 9:44 pm: but most was killer/slasher stuff

[scottnicholson] 9:44 pm: I was surprised to get hardly any supernatural stories

[scottnicholson] 9:44 pm: it’s all great but it really jumped out at me

[scottnicholson] 9:45 pm: I wanted a Creepy/Eerie/Tales from the Crypt vibe

[scottnicholson] 9:45 pm: but it became its own thing, 21st Century horror

[scottnicholson] 9:46 pm: I guess I don’t mean “age” so much as the influences of the writers

[scottnicholson] 9:46 pm: there’s less King influence and more Thomas Harris and Freddy Krueger

[Jazzyartwriter2] 9:46 pm: I’m thinking of King’s Misery, which was one of the scariest books/movies ever. It also brought in the idea of writer’s block, at least to me. I couldn’t write under those circumstances. His jailer was really horrible. A very creepy story.

[scottnicholson] 9:47 pm: (deena, we’ll have the fast v slow zombie debate some other time…)

[Deena] 9:47 pm: That was one of my scariest stories ever.

[Deena] 9:47 pm: heh. You’re on, Scott.

[scottnicholson] 9:47 pm: Misery is probably my favorite King

[scottnicholson] 9:47 pm: yet it has no supernatural elements!

[scottnicholson] 9:47 pm: and I agree, probably his scariest

[spot_writes] 9:47 pm: nope. duma key was his scariest or the shining.

[spot_writes] 9:47 pm: So do you think that supernatural horror is going by the wayside?

[spot_writes] 9:47 pm: I hope not, since that’s what I prefer to write.

[scottnicholson] 9:48 pm: no, Spot I think supernatural is alive and well

[scottnicholson] 9:48 pm: there’s strong interest in the paranormal

[scottnicholson] 9:48 pm: everybody loves a good ghost story

[scottnicholson] 9:48 pm: it’s the marketing that’s killed it

[scottnicholson] 9:48 pm: but in the indie era, that choice will be there

[scottnicholson] 9:49 pm: NY publishers need books that sell 20,000 copies at least

[scottnicholson] 9:49 pm: but you can be successful with a few thousand copies as an indie

[scottnicholson] 9:49 pm: that market is there

[scottnicholson] 9:50 pm: spot haven’t read Duma Key but the Shining is up there for sure

[scottnicholson] 9:50 pm: but as you pointed out, horror is personal–to me, the #1 fan, the imprisonment, the writers block–and having to BURN YOUR MANUSCRIPT–are all horrible!

[Jazzyartwriter2] 9:50 pm: Am I wrong in characterizing Misery as being in the more subtle class, rather than the loud, everything happens fast one?

[scottnicholson] 9:51 pm: Misery had a buildup, dread of what was going to happen next

[scottnicholson] 9:51 pm: I hate to keep using movies but this happens in books too

[scottnicholson] 9:51 pm: how many times have you seen the five or seven teens show up

[scottnicholson] 9:51 pm: and you already know all but two will die

[scottnicholson] 9:52 pm: and you really don’t care which ones it is

[scottnicholson] 9:52 pm: that’s all that is wrong with modern horror

[scottnicholson] 9:52 pm: nobody cares

[scottnicholson] 9:52 pm: they go through the motions, even the audience

[widdershins] 9:53 pm: Desensitised by… if you’ll pardon the pun… overkill

[widdershins] 9:53 pm: thangyouverymuch

[ninjabarb] 9:53 pm: Someone, perhaps King, said that horror tends to thrive when times are good. Do you think maybe it’s struggling and taking new forms now because there are high levels of anxiety already in the world? That is we don’t want to be constantly grappling with our fears?

[scottnicholson] 9:54 pm: maybe but all that is too simple

[scottnicholson] 9:54 pm: when have times ever been easy?

[scottnicholson] 9:54 pm: the good ol’ days when blacks were strung up by lynch mobs?

[scottnicholson] 9:54 pm: or you could beat your wife because she was “property”?

[scottnicholson] 9:55 pm: life sucks, life is hard, and humans are insane

[ninjabarb] 9:55 pm: All very true.

[scottnicholson] 9:55 pm: I feel fiction is catharsis

[scottnicholson] 9:55 pm: I’m happier than almost anyone I know

[scottnicholson] 9:55 pm: because I can dump it all out there on a page and walk away whistling

[scottnicholson] 9:56 pm: yet some people think i “must be creepy”

[scottnicholson] 9:56 pm: I think storytelling’s job is to teach us

[scottnicholson] 9:56 pm: about ourselves, why we are here, and what we can do to get better

[scottnicholson] 9:56 pm: good horror can do that

[scottnicholson] 9:57 pm: another reason I love the supernatural;, because you can really address those core questions of faith and meaning.

[ninjabarb] 9:59 pm: Those are the sorts of horror I tend to enjoy best for exactly the same reasons. I
wonder what it says that most people read horror more now as punishment or revenge fantasies.

[scottnicholson] 10:00 pm: interesting barb, you should write essays on this stuff

[scottnicholson] 10:00 pm: there’s also a bit of masochism in a lot of it

[scottnicholson] 10:00 pm: despair

[scottnicholson] 10:00 pm: I mean, zombie fiction is all pretty much one-way

[scottnicholson] 10:01 pm: I’ve not given much thought to the revenge angle

[widdershins] 10:02 pm: ok…. fast and slow zombies … what gives?

[Deena] 10:02 pm: heh.

[Deena] 10:02 pm: Fast zombies are terrifying.

[scottnicholson] 10:02 pm: ok, to me the most chilling thing about zombies is the slow, persistent, keep-after-ya attitudes

[scottnicholson] 10:03 pm: shambling, unstoppable, hungry

[Deena] 10:03 pm: But if they’re slow, you have time to dismember them!

[widdershins] 10:03 pm: does that make the Terminator a zombie?

[scottnicholson] 10:03 pm: if they are fast it’s just too much like just another shootemup movie to me

[scottnicholson] 10:03 pm: another bug hunt

[scottnicholson] 10:03 pm: “Huh oh here come’s the military”

[Deena] 10:03 pm: huh. I have to concede that point.

[scottnicholson] 10:03 pm: yes Deena but they KEEP coming

[scottnicholson] 10:04 pm: sure, maybe the fast ones do too, but they kill you before you have time to dread it

[scottnicholson] 10:04 pm: slow zombies allow for dread and suspense

[Deena] 10:04 pm: Yes. I suddenly pictured slowly squirming fingers with the shambling unstoppable… so okay. You might win. But I don’t scream at slow zombies.

[Deena] 10:04 pm: You might be right.

[Deena] 10:04 pm: Widdershin asked: Is the terminator a kind of zombie?

[scottnicholson] 10:04 pm: well I wouldn’t tell you what to like

[scottnicholson] 10:05 pm: I just know what I like

[scottnicholson] 10:05 pm: Night of the Living Dead–THAT’s a horror movie

[Deena] 10:05 pm: I think it was my first, actually. It was pretty freaky.

[scottnicholson] 10:05 pm: yeah I could see the Term as a zombie

[scottnicholson] 10:05 pm: but I can’t get past the machine thing

[scottnicholson] 10:05 pm: he’s alien to me

[scottnicholson] 10:05 pm: like the creatures in Aliens

[scottnicholson] 10:06 pm: he reasons too much

[scottnicholson] 10:06 pm: calculates

[scottnicholson] 10:06 pm: I like zombie as a brainless dread

[zan] 10:06 pm: Since the traditional way to make zombies involves the poison from the blowfish, which paralyzes, slow is the only way to work.

[widdershins] 10:07 pm: the term and zombie both follow their programming…. nothing more

[scottnicholson] 10:07 pm: hmm interesting

[scottnicholson] 10:07 pm: I’m convinced..somewhat

[Deena] 10:07 pm: I think part of the horror of zombies is that they’re supposed to be humans. Loved
ones. People we know.

[Deena] 10:08 pm: And then suddenly they’re not.

[scottnicholson] 10:08 pm: well and that whole paranoia of the other, too

[Deena] 10:08 pm: The terminator maybe taps into that, with the human disguises.

[scottnicholson] 10:08 pm: invasion of the body snatchers

[scottnicholson] 10:08 pm: “But for the grace of God go I…” or whatever

[Deena] 10:08 pm: oh yeah. That was cool. Stepford wives?

[scottnicholson] 10:09 pm: Stepford was awesome until they tried to turn it into a parody

[spot_writes] 10:09 pm: Sort of off topic, sort of not…Do you know that there are people who didn’t know that “I am Legend” was a book before the will smith movie?! And that they didn’t know about the two previous movies made from it or even who Richard Matheson was?? Luckily, my boss at the bookstore liked it when I was sarcastic…

[scottnicholson] 10:09 pm: you can’t make a parody out of social commentary

[scottnicholson] 10:09 pm: well it’s an “age” thing

[Deena] 10:09 pm: Heh. Spot. Greg is laughing. I think he likes that too.

[scottnicholson] 10:09 pm: this is an era when people think Speilberg invented “War of the Worlds”

[spot_writes] 10:10 pm: It’s sad…

[scottnicholson] 10:10 pm: It was “Will Smith’s I am Legend”

[scottnicholson] 10:10 pm: Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds”

[scottnicholson] 10:10 pm: no wonder people get confused

[Deena] 10:10 pm: You said earlier that supernatural horror allows you to address the concepts of faith
and meaning. Can you talk about that a little more, if you have time?

[scottnicholson] 10:10 pm: well, maybe it’s not so sad

[zan] 10:10 pm: Not at all to be confused with the original story

[scottnicholson] 10:10 pm: maybe we are just crotchety old farts who like books

[widdershins] 10:10 pm: Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man … same story

[FrancesP] 10:11 pm: But, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” was NOT Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

[scottnicholson] 10:11 pm: lol

[spot_writes] 10:11 pm: Vincent price in the original I Am Legend

[Deena] 10:11 pm: I’m not crotchety. Much.

[scottnicholson] 10:11 pm: yeah now THAT to me was the original Romero style zombie

[spot_writes] 10:11 pm: And I’m not old…ish.

[zan] 10:12 pm: OK I am old

[widdershins] 10:12 pm: but hey … we all … er….. do stuff with out intestinal gasses

[scottnicholson] 10:12 pm: a few of those old 30s zombie movies were pretty creepy but not as menacing

[Deena] 10:14 pm: Greg asked me to ask my question again: You said earlier that supernatural horror
allows you to address the concepts of faith and meaning. Can you talk about that a little more, if you
have time?

[ninjabarb] 10:14 pm: @Deena For me. in most horror, the good is challenged by an incursion of
something bad. Facing the bad both external and internal tries characters’ souls. In the end, we like to
have good take the day. Horror stories tend to be moral at their heart. Mostly.

[Deena] 10:15 pm: Barb, that makes sense.

[scottnicholson] 10:15 pm: sure, Deena–my first novel was about a haunted church. The Red Church had a shape-shifting preacher open to interpretation–the devil? A demon? a golem?

[Deena] 10:15 pm: I remember that one.

[scottnicholson] 10:16 pm: and there’s a 13 yr old boy raised Baptist

[scottnicholson] 10:16 pm: now confronted with all these things while trying to make sense of “Jesus in his heart”

[scottnicholson] 10:16 pm: I mean, just Jesus is scary enough

[scottnicholson] 10:16 pm: and now you have a haunted church?

[scottnicholson] 10:17 pm: so that’s the type of thing I like to challenge

[scottnicholson] 10:17 pm: in the reader

[Deena] 10:17 pm: Thanks, that’s interesting.

[scottnicholson] 10:17 pm: barb, I agree-horror is incredibly conservative

[scottnicholson] 10:17 pm: we expect good to win

[Deena] 10:17 pm: It resonated with me a little more than with Greg, I think, different backgrounds. The
whole “what if I don’t do this right?” thing was a big fear for me as a kid.

[scottnicholson] 10:17 pm: we expect the two virgin teens to emerge from the slaughter house

[Deena] 10:18 pm: But they’re never fat, ugly, geeky, or unpopular kids.

[scottnicholson] 10:18 pm: Deena, good old-time fear-religion has gone out of fashion…

[Deena] 10:18 pm: (sorry… thinking too hard)

[ninjabarb] 10:19 pm: They’re also not the ones who are drinking hard or screwing around.

[Deena] 10:19 pm: I’ve heard that Scott, probably because us old farts got sick of it.

[scottnicholson] 10:19 pm: In Drummer Boy, it’s not really faith I used but belonging

[scottnicholson] 10:19 pm: 13 yr old kid coming out as gay

[scottnicholson] 10:19 pm: to him, the supernatural makes more sense than THIS world where he doesn’t belong

[widdershins] 10:19 pm: because then.. then virgin queens… er I mean, teens would have no purpose

[scottnicholson] 10:19 pm: those types of “meaning” questions

[scottnicholson] 10:20 pm: moral lesson sin horror

[scottnicholson] 10:20 pm: usually the ones that survive were the first ones I wanted to die!

[ninjabarb] 10:21 pm: LOL. Me too, Scott.

[widdershins] 10:21 pm: and no matter how many times you tell ‘em not to, they still open the door

[scottnicholson] 10:21 pm: ok I will be back tomorrow night

[zan] 10:21 pm: Thanks for a great time

[scottnicholson] 10:22 pm: hopefully with some friends

[scottnicholson] 10:22 pm: to tackle 21st century publishing…

[scottnicholson] 10:22 pm: hope you guys can make it

[spot_writes] 10:22 pm: Thanks Scott! Will you be at any conventions in the near future?

[scottnicholson] 10:22 pm: thanks, I learned a lot, you have given me much to think about

[widdershins] 10:22 pm: yep…. I fnally decided to enter the 21st century this year

[scottnicholson] 10:22 pm: spot, I don’t know, trying to go to Killer Nashville

Deena] 10:23 pm: Goodnight everyone! I’ll see you all in about a half hour.

[scottnicholson] 10:23 pm: I do comic cons in NC

[widdershins] 10:23 pm: see ya then

[scottnicholson] 10:23 pm: that’s about all I can afford at the moment

[scottnicholson] 10:23 pm: good night all

[PTurner] 10:23 pm: Thanks for a great session! Bye, everyone. Back to work. LOL

[spot_writes] 10:24 pm: Night!

[ninjabarb] 10:24 pm: Night, and thanks.